Tag Archives: Drugs
18 December 2013
Amid growing debate over international drug control policy in Latin America, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that a decision by the Uruguayan parliament to legalise cannabis is a strike against international cooperation.
Yuri Fedotov, head of the UNODC, said that ‘Just as illicit drugs are everyone’s shared responsibility, there is a need for each country to work closely together and to jointly agree on the way forward for dealing with this global challenge’.
Source: UNODC | UNODC stresses the health dimension of drug use as Uruguay parliament passes legislation to legalize cannabis
30 September 2013
María Antonieta Guillen De Bográn, vice-president of Honduras, addressed transnational crime in her speech to the UN General Assembly, noting that ‘effectively combating transnational crime also requires international and regional efforts’, because they are more comprehensive in enforcing the principle of shared but differentiated responsibility between the states that are consumers, and those that are producers of drugs.
Source: General Assembly of the United Nations | General Debate of the 68th Session | Honduras | H.E. Mrs. María Antonieta de Bográn, Vice-President | 27 September 2013
Source: UN News Centre | Senior Honduran official stresses need to scale–up combat against transborder crime
27 September 2012
On 24 September 2012, the High-level Meeting on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels, taking place at the 67th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), adopted the Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the 67th Session of the General Assembly on the rule of law at the national and international levels. The Document reaffirms the ‘commitment to the rule of law and its fundamental importance for political dialogue and cooperation among all States’.
Paragraph 24 of the Declaration emphasizes the ‘importance of strengthened international cooperation, based on the principles of shared responsibility, and in accordance with international law, in order to dismantle illicit networks and counter the world drug problem and transnational organized crime, including money laundering, trafficking in persons, trafficking in arms and other forms of organized crime, all of which threaten national security and undermine sustainable development and the rule of law.’
Source: UNGA | Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels
27 July 2012
As part of U.S. efforts to fight drugs, an elite unit of Ghana’s counternarcotics police is trained by U.S. officials. There are plans to train other counternarcotics police squads in Kenya and Nigeria under the so-called ‘West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative’.
(West) Africa is increasingly seen as ‘the new frontier’ in terms of counternarcotics, since cartels from Latin American are more and more using pooly governed states in Africa to smuggle cocaine into Europe.
Source: New York Times | U.S. Drug War Expands to Africa, a Newer Hub for Cartels